[FIXED] Using a helper function in the config/session.php gives an error with all php artisan commands / composer

Issue

In the session.php I use the helper function url() for creating a dynamic domain name. This way when I move to the real server I won't have to change the domain name. It looks like this:

'domain' => url(''),

Everything works fine in the browser but when I use any php artisan or composer commands from the terminal it will give me this error:

PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught ReflectionException: Class log does not exist in /vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Container/Container.php:738

Trying it like this doesn't seem to help

'domain' => @url(''),

Is there anything to be done? I'm using Laravel 5.2

Solution

That's because the url helper function uses the Illuminate\Routing\UrlGenerator class to generate the URL and that class requires a Request instance to be injected. And in your particular case the problem there is no request context for an artisan command.

---

My suggestion is to use an environment variable. So in your .env file you can have:

SESSION_DOMAIN=mydomain.com

And in your config/session.php file you can have:

'domain' => env('SESSION_DOMAIN'),

You can safely use the env helper method as it has no special dependencies.

---

If you really want to use the dynamic approach, you can set the cookie domain via a conditional assignment that only sets the cookie domain using url if the application is not running in console mode. So having this will do the trick:

'domain' => app()->runningInConsole() ? null : parse_url(url(''), PHP_URL_HOST),

Answered By - Bogdan